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"non-BINARY" by Maxine Moriwaki



my body [01100010 01101111 01100100 01111001] is only 2 states of being


a 1 or 0


follow my line of symmetry & it becomes [01100010 01100101 01100011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110011] something i find paralyzing


a [01100001] simple erasure of my identity; false [01100110 01100001 01101100 01110011 01100101] god in nitrile gloves


well-meaning and devastating


a positive [01110000 01101111 01110011 01101001 01110100 01101001 01110110 01100101] for something i can’t control


as [01100001 01110011] if i [01101001] could wake up and be right. bite instead of bark, square jaw and heavy shoulders


as if i open my eyes and anything but shadows grow [01100111 01110010 01101111 01110111] on my face. trying to hunch straight lines into my silhouette again 


staring at the mirror, not [01101110 01101111 01110100] seeing myself, like a vampire can’t see their own reflection


the image there doesn’t belong to me. the body isn’t mine [01101101 01101001 01101110 01100101]


i think about the frog, boiled alive, dis[01100100 01101001 01110011]interested in the slowly warming water. the way at some point, pain becomes a regular sensation


i admit to forgetting my own desperation at times, wounds never tended [01110100 01100101 01101110 01100100 01100101 01100100] to, forgotten in the monotony of discomfort


i admit to sometimes looking down at myself and feeling nothing, twisting and turning to agree that yes, this form is beautiful. but only when viewed from a distance. to inhabit it is never anything but wrong [01110111 01110010 01101111 01101110 01100111].


//


[body] [becomes] 

[a] [false] [positive] 

[as] [i] [grow]

[not] [mine]

[dis][tended] 

[wrong]




Maxine Moriwaki (he/she) enjoys slam poetry, 50s jazz, and doodling strange creatures in his notebooks. He is an LA-based poet and writer in his junior year of high school.


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